Roblox has more than 50 million players a month.

The DeanBeat: Roblox’s kid developers make enough ‘robux’ to pay for college

Jackson Munsell, Brandon LaRouche and Alex Balfanz grew up in very different places. But they’re converging on San Jose, Calif., this weekend as developers of games in the world of Roblox, the blocky virtual world that is a cousin of Lego and Minecraft.

These teenagers have grown up with Roblox, a place where young developers (both boys and, increasingly, girls) can create their own games and make “robux,” or in-game currency from them. And as the online world surpasses 56 million monthly active users (up from 30 million in December), those young developers are finding they can make enough money — converting robux into real money — to pay for college and more. The players engage with Roblox for 496 million hours a month. User-generated content (UGC) is thriving, and these teens and Roblox itself are riding the wave.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.